Watch here as the Pip-Boy is booted up and if you're quick to pause, you'll notice two things; First, there's no tab for skills anymore. The stats page gives up Status, SPECIAL and Perks tabs, but no place to view skills. Second, if you go back and read the descriptions for each stat, they describe how they affect in game actions, but with no mention of skills.

The next piece of evidence comes from the crafting preview section, where at several points certain weapon mods are shown a perk requirement("Science! Rank 1", or "Gun Nut Rank 4") to craft.

Based on this, and Bethesda's (often frustrating) history of "streamlining" game mechanics, it would appear that skills have been turned into ranked perks for crafting purposes. It's likely the ranks will equate to the skill point requirements in FO3(eg rank 2=25 skill points, rank 5=100), and given the return of bobbleheads I'm guessing that you'll likely have to spend four perk slots to max a given crafting skill(five if you miss a required bobblehead).

If we assume a level cap of 30(based on previous games, and further indicated by this pic of the collectors Pip-Boy showing a character at level 24) that would mean only maxing three or four crafting skills if one wants a few other perks, or perhaps only one or two, depending on the power and/or synergy of the other perks.

And while I don't think it likely, I have to at least mention the possibility that they might split things up so the player gets to pick one "skill" perk and one "other" perk per level. It'd take some of the sting out of the change and tracks with Bethesda's penchant for making the PC too powerfull too quickly. Even if it still leaves high-intelligence builds in an eight hour marathon of Ow! My Balls!

Honestly, this is one of the few things I've seen about FO4 that's actually straight up disappointing. The only real upside to this is that we're still dealing with Bethesda. It's very likely that skill points are buried somewhere in the code, and even if it takes F4SE and extensive UI mods I'm sure they'll be modded back in.

One thing that may indicate otherwise is the bobble-head stand that was shown during the crafting segment of the E3 presentation. There were 7 slots in front, 3 SPECIAL bobble-heads were already placed there. Behind that were 13 more slots. How many skills did FO3 and FNV have? 13.

My theory is that skills are still present, just not in the traditional 0-100 scale. Instead, I think they will be leveled up on a Ranks scale. Maybe it would work like "To build this you need Rank 4 of X," or "to choose this perk you need 5 agility and Rank 3 in Gun Nut." Perhaps the skills are on the perk page. I remember seeing a command in the Pip-Boy menu that led to a "Perk Tree."

A system like that may lead to a more balanced leveling experience. Kind of like the Witcher series where, even at max level, you could only max out a few skills/abilities. I think I might prefer something like that instead of the FO3/FNV style of being maxed out in skills by the time you get to the level cap.

I want to make a correction to my first post. I said that on the bobblehead stand there were 3 SPECIAL bobbleheads. I made a mistake there, 2 were SPECIAL. The other one was a Barter bobblehead, i.e. a skill in previous games. What this may implicate has yet to be found out.

I would still like a leveling system where you would need to specialize in certain skills in order to create certain types of playstyles, instead of being able to max out everything.

There is a perk tree. I'd imagine it will involve all the perks being divided into trees that equivocate to the skills. Which, honestly, I'm fine with. Also, at one point in the demo you see a character at level 48. I imagine it will adopt Skyrim's system, except instead of smithing, light armor, etc, it would use the skills as the root. It isn't like Fallout had a very complex skill system anyway. There was virtually no downside to just maxing all the skills, and it wasn't that hard. Honestly, I'm excited to see whatever the new system is.

So if a player does not use VATS... Perception is totally useless and so is Intelligence because it just boosts xp gain?... And if one does not use VATS or sneak then Agility is also useless...

SPECIAL system seems to suck in FO4... and seems to be turning more into a Skyrim system with perks instead of skills... The game might seems awesome to me but if the character leveling system is not more immersive than Skyrim one I will have the same problem I have with it, I will get bored after a couple hours of playing the game...

At least I am hopping that if they do have a perk system for leveling up it will be much better than the Skyrim one and I will still love playing the game positive thinking.

I hope they aren't 100% after all even I sneak around sometimes but I really never use VATS so Perception would suck for me, seems like they keep trying to make players depend a lot of VATS on this game, I do like how it doesn't pause the game while choosing VATS targets, but still in a game that plays real time trying to make the player focus on VATS seems to me that of Bethesda is scared the combat is too hard for most players to be played in real time, or that the real time combat in the game just sucks (which I have my doubts on this last one).

What I can see dependent of the SPECIAL values might be dialogue and actions, like in NV (can say this if it has Perception 7 or more, can hack and reprogram this robot if it has Intelligence of 8 or more).

Perception has also been used to how far away you can notice "things" on your compass etc.

The one aspect I was thinking about is that they may be doing an XP to Skill aspect of leveling. To get better at a skill you have to use it. Oblivion was like this right? (sorry haven't looked at it in years)

You currently gain XP for lockpick/hacking/combat/dialog challenge/ quest completions. So what if the XP is tiered to boost a skill that was used to gain the XP in the first place? You would still have the 0-100 system or whatever number that is chosen and as you use the skill and gain the XP the skill gets the boost at level up making things a tad easier to do again.

Personally I would like to be able to attempt a lock even If I don't have the "skill point rank" to do it. The chance of success would be 1% maybe but I'd still like to attempt it.

I would have a feeling that Intelligence would now become quite useless save for perhaps requirements for some perks and speech checks. It used to be a very important SPECIAL for people who wanted to be a jack of all trades in the "Skills" department. If Skills are truly gone, it will make that fun feeling of being the Smarty pants of the lot kind of go away.

With Intelligence's biggest gain now being XP Gain, in most respects most people seem to care little about how fast they level. If they can invest in other areas and level slowly but at the end of the road be "BETTER" they will drop out of Intelligence and go else where with their SPECIALS. Kind of like how Charisma was next to useless save for a few rare speech checks and being required for Specific Perks on Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

So in that respects Intelligence on Fallout 4 may end up like Charisma from Fallout 3/NV, ie almost useless.

I want to take this opportunity to point out that, unless you intend to do a lot of gambling or are building a character focused on critical hits, Luck is actually pretty useless as well, maybe they brought back critical failures for FO4 (I wouldn't get my hopes up)

I want to take this opportunity to point out that, unless you intend to do a lot of gambling or are building a character focused on critical hits, Luck is actually pretty useless as well, maybe they brought back critical failures for FO4 (I wouldn't get my hopes up)

Luck also determined special encounters in prior games (Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics), before the Wild Wasteland Trait in NV. Don't think there was Special encounter in FO3, randomized WW-type encounters, but not Luck-based specials.

I think Todd Howard said in an interview that they were hoping to avoid any sort of xp cap.

In short, having a higher INT means you get perk points faster.

The best you can be might be capped according to your SPECIAL, since they affect the perks you can get. So to be good at something you're going to actually be physically able to achieve it. Become whatever you want, as long as it makes sense. No more convincing the bloodthirsty warlord into turning the army around and going home with CHA 1, for instance.

I watched a video by Gopher where he has a bit of a ramble about this topic. He thinks that ultimately Perks will play a bigger role in your character this time round and basically take the place of the skill points. So where as in the past game you had your guns skill which determined how good you were with weapons, you'll now need to take perks to get skilled with different weapons. And those perks will probably have several levels to them to increase your ability and damage output.

I think Todd Howard said in an interview that they were hoping to avoid any sort of xp cap.

In short, having a higher INT means you get perk points faster.

The best you can be might be capped according to your SPECIAL, since they affect the perks you can get. So to be good at something you're going to actually be physically able to achieve it. Become whatever you want, as long as it makes sense. No more convincing the bloodthirsty warlord into turning the army around and going home with CHA 1, for instance.

I just kind of don't like that. I enjoy the low-level cap specialized characters that NV and older Fallout games bring. Sure, with Min/Maxing you can get a lot of skills pretty high and maybe even maxed, but it takes work.

I don't know, I just don't like games that much were more time = a more generic character. Oblivion, Skyrim, The darksouls series, ect. i just really enjoy the feel of leveling up and becoming specialized. It's just not the same feeling with perks.... It is one of the reasons why I enjoyed FO3 and NV over Oblivion and skyrim.

I don't know, I just don't like games that much were more time = a more generic character. Oblivion, Skyrim, The darksouls series, ect. i just really enjoy the feel of leveling up and becoming specialized.

Yes, I agree. Skyrim absolutely had this problem where the longer you played, the less there was to distinguish your character.

It's like perks, taken together make this mold for your character and as you level up, all you can do is fill that mold. Maybe at some half-way point, Character A has filled in along one side of the mold more than Character B, but when both are at a higher level they occupy pretty much the same space.

With quests, too there is the pitfall of allowing the player to accomplish all of the things in one playthrough. Bethesda hasn't kept a good track record, imo of letting the player fail and deal with the choices he/she makes in the game. They just want to give you everything which eventually makes anything you do pointless.

I am a bit scared of the skills disappearing and being replaced by ranks given by perks. I can't play Skyrim without being bored of it for more than 1 to 2 hours because character progression is just ... well boring.

Skills improve the character overall, and perks are rewards for improving the character in specific ways, so if we remove the skills we get every level and replace them with perks it loses that reward feeling one gets from having leveled a couple of times (reminds me of games that have achievements that are just like "start playing", not much of an achievement and more like a "look you got a shiny thing, don't you feel rewarded now?"), also I can already see that perks will probably become less specialized and more generic, like the point of a perk is to increase the science skill instead of giving the character that special ability a perk in older games would give and if this does not happen then I can see the player becoming a walking god really fast.

I start to worry if one day the SPECIAL system will be removed too, then we end up with a shooting game and not a real RPG .

This was just a rant from an old style RPG player that is tired of seeing games becoming more and more simple and losing the "complicated" side of character progression so they can be understood and appeal to "everyone" (basically just making them shooting games with quests).

I still applaud the new crafting and modding weapons, the make a settlement and how one will have a use for most junk that can be found around the wastes, so I am not saying that FO4 will suck, but it's character progression might suck .

You've summed up my my feelings about character development, but I'm preparing myself for F4 by learning to like Skyrim :).

Off topic: SkyTweak can set exp gain to 0 for skills. And a bunch of roleplay/sandbox mods and ignoring the main quest. I'm actually having fun.

I wouldn't be surprised if the SPECIAL system has an even smaller effect on what our character can do. In F1 it defined our character, in F3 it could gimp us a little, in F4 it'll just be there for flavor. Maybe Arwen will make another player nerf mod for us.

I think the developers thinking, for modern games, is that there's so much time and money invested that they really want players to see all of it. And with all the competition they don't dare force players/reviewers into investing time into seeing if they like the game.

I'm sure you already thought of all this, but I just wanted to join in the rant :). Hope we don't end up over at NMA.

I just thought about this, what if the SPECIAL system directly ties into prerequisites for ALL possible skills?

We used to have "AGI 6" required for "X Perk", what if it was tiered across the whole concept of the "skill perks"? Using for example In 2 level increments, Perk Requirements of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 SPECIAL. IE Science: "Science: 1" needs 2+ INT, "Science: 2" needs 4+ INT, "Science: 3" 6+ INT, and so on? Further locking higher and higher tiers behind a SPECIAL requirement. One could still make "jack of all trades" character builds, but you wouldn't be a "master" at anything. Or you can get that super high SPECIAL stat and be excellent at your chosen path? I'd say that it would limit the effect of a "dump stat" as well, having both positives and real negatives with super high/super low SPECIAL.

You're right, I shouldn't be judging at all, let alone on a trailer. I let my cynicism get the better of me, sorry guys. Lets look on the bright side, we get a new Fallout game in a few months. And Bethesda is making the world, so it'll be great.

I just thought about this, what if the SPECIAL system directly ties into prerequisites for ALL possible skills?

We used to have "AGI 6" required for "X Perk", what if it was tiered across the whole concept of the "skill perks"? Using for example In 2 level increments, Perk Requirements of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 SPECIAL. IE Science: "Science: 1" needs 2+ INT, "Science: 2" needs 4+ INT, "Science: 3" 6+ INT, and so on? Further locking higher and higher tiers behind a SPECIAL requirement. One could still make "jack of all trades" character builds, but you wouldn't be a "master" at anything. Or you can get that super high SPECIAL stat and be excellent at your chosen path? I'd say that it would limit the effect of a "dump stat" as well, having both positives and real negatives with super high/super low SPECIAL.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The perks you can get are tied to your SPECIAL, so to get good at something you actually have to be physically competent at it. For instance, to make a speech character you actually have to invest in charisma, to be a sharpshooter you have to invest in perception, to be sneaky you have to invest in agility, ect.

Since Todd mentioned they'd like to move away from a level cap, the only way you will be able to make a "master of all" character would be if the means exist to get straight 10's in SPECIAL, and you start with a lot less points to go around this time.

I'm liking this interpretation, and it seems plausible since each perk branch represents a primary statistic. If SPECIAL doesn't matter for how far along each branch you're able to take perks then it's an opportunity sorely missed.

I'm liking this interpretation, and it seems plausible since each perk branch represents a primary statistic. If SPECIAL doesn't matter for how far along each branch you're able to take perks then it's an opportunity sorely missed.

The (blurry)perk chart was posted elsewhere, and I noted that there appeared to be 10 perks perk SPECIAL stat. This could mean that, starting at the top, each lower perk requires an additional point in the SPECIAL corresponding to it, with a 10 required to put points in all the perks for a stat.

Another person then pointed out that the topmost cells in the chart are pictures of the SPECIAL stats themselves, and that you could maybe put a perk point in those to raise the stat by 1, similar to intense training (which we've always had).

I think this would be nifty, though 70 perks doesn't look like a lot when it's laid out like that. Maybe quest perks, bobblehead perks (i think they will work like the optional bobblehead plugin TTW has), and challenge perks will add more depth.